


Writer's Block

by Hezjena2023



Series: Silver!Verse - Finder’s Seeker [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cass and Varric make sweet love in a glade, Cassandra lends an ear, Creator Gift Exchange, Drunk Sex, Explicit Consent, F/M, Fluffy Ending, Heart to Hearts, Hurt/Comfort, Oneshot, Prompt: Smut, Varric can't quite get over Bianca, Varric has baggage he has to work through
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:33:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28130955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hezjena2023/pseuds/Hezjena2023
Summary: “Damn it, Cassandra, we’ve got to be two miles from Skyhold.” The trees covered a small clearing, barely twenty paces across and there’s a tree that’s been hacked up badly by a sword that’s still lodged in it. He wondered if she’d use it on him. “There are easier ways to hide the body.” He grumbled, secretly relieved they’d come to a stop.***My take of how Cassandra and Varric might get together
Relationships: Cassandra Pentaghast/Varric Tethras
Series: Silver!Verse - Finder’s Seeker [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2066982
Comments: 10
Kudos: 30





	Writer's Block

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kyupidete](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyupidete/gifts).



> A huge thank you to my gorgeous beta reader, [PiecesofSolas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofsolas)

Varric Tethras suspected that he was drunk.

In fact he was sure of this, as he tried to blow his loose blond hair from out of his face, and her hand reached out to brush the loose strands away from his eyes and tuck them behind his ear, it was such a tender action that it made his chest ache. Her outline was hazy against the sheet, he blinked, but it didn’t make her any clearer.

He must be so drunk and this was a vivid hallucination. There was no way the situation he found himself in was real. 

But no, he remembered the bad flirting in the Herald’s Rest. Then glancing out the window to see dusk falling, and much, much later when they were the last in the Tavern before Cabot had kicked them out. 

They’d been stumbling, and he remembered her offering him a nightcap, but then they had both staggered back to his room over Skyhold’s great hall. Collapsing through the door in a rush of messy kisses, tangled hands… and now… 

“Varric?” Cassandra asked, suddenly in perfect focus, her whiskey breath hot against his forehead. She was looking at him, her bistre brown eyes, framed by her lashes, a flicker of uncertainty across her features. 

“I’m, ugh, just gave me a moment Seeker. It’s been a while since I did this.” He braced still, hilt deep inside her and propped up on his hands.

She huffed, a very recognisable sound through her nose, “don’t call me Seeker right now, Varric.” And very experimentally she wriggled her hips. 

“You’re going to kill me.” He grunted, absolutely believing the words coming out of his mouth, so much so that he repeated himself for emphasis. “You’re going to be the death of me.” His words sink down to the tight defined muscle of her abdomen. 

The thought struck him that if he pressed his hand against her stomach, he could feel himself hard inside her. Which made the room tip too far to the left. And he was acutely aware that this wasn’t a fantasy in the hours of the night so late that they could be called morning. 

Cassandra was here, he was finally going to sleep with Cassandra. Technically, he was actually in the middle sleeping with her. And all he could think was how badly he was going to mess this up. 

She made the same sound again, a huff through her nose. 

He’d heard it a thousand times before, like she was angry, disappointed that he wouldn’t just fuck her like she wanted. 

She bucked her hips again, the gentle slide of wet slick against his whole manhood. 

Varric didn’t hate the sensation, _Maker no,_ in fact he was throbbing so hard he might just spend if she so much as wriggled again. But he went back out of the situation he had quite literally himself in balls-deep in. As he pulled his cock just an inch back, she arched in anticipation and he made the mistake of looking at her face. 

Cassandra’s head tilted back, her mouth agape, her eyes half closed with lust and there’s a rather lovely flush across her cheeks. She wasn’t angry. _She was riveting._

_And shit, when had the Seeker become Cassandra?_

And Varric couldn’t begin to think of an answer, so he did the only thing he was sure wasn’t a completely terrible idea and pulled all of the way out of her. Then rolled onto his back on the mattress beside her. “Shit.” 

She looked confused, “Varric?” Her voice was small, but sure, a question that was more than just his name. She rolled onto her side, cupping her head with one hand, her eyebrows knitted together with worry. “Something wrong?”

“I can’t, there’s someone else.” Varric told her, because it was the first thing that came to mind. It wasn’t that it wasn’t true, but even as he said it, it felt like a lie. After all, Bianca hasn’t been his in a long time and she certainly isn’t waiting for him. “Oh, shit. Sorry.”

Cassandra wrapped a hand across her breasts, pushed the other hand through her hair, bit her lower lip. She sounded uncharacteristically soft when she whispered, “yer.” Then her duty pushed through her embarrassment and she stood up to shrug her clothes back on and get out of there. Quietly she said, simply, “I didn’t know.” 

“I didn’t tell you.” They were hollow words and undercut by the fact that he was still hard. Varric caught Cassandra glance at his cock before she pulled her tunic over her head. It was just sort of there, in between them, shiny with her slick. Even cooling in the night air had done nothing to dissuade his erection. 

Cassandra huffed for a third time. Once he would have thought all of her little noises were the same, but they weren’t, he had started to learn the difference; and this one is just regret and disappointment and she left shortly after. 

Not another word spoken by either of them. 

For the first time he was rather done with all the talking.

He grabbed a pillow and pressed his face into it the moment he was alone. His cock still jabbing into the mattress, so he wrapped his hand around it. It was nothing like the Seeker, but his fingers were more familiar. He snorted at his own train of thought, of course wanking was familiar, he’d done little else for years. 

But this time as he relieved himself, a few quick tugs and he was done; he only thought of Cassandra, how he was a drunk man alone on an island, who had just turned down his one hope of rescue. 

  
  


It was a handful of days before he was able to catch her, alone. He spotted her in the training yard still sweaty from beating up a training dummy. Her face hallowed by her dark hair and her face glowing. She had been avoiding him, and he had caught her once, she stopped dead in a corridor, blushed furiously, refused to make eye contact with him before she turned on her heel and backtracked the way that she’d just came just so they wouldn’t have to pass. 

But he felt he needed to at least explain what had happened, before his anxious energy consumed him. 

“Seeker?”

Cassandra turned, grunted her disgust and lopped the head clean off a training dummy. Then cast her sword into the muck turned to glower at him. 

_He readjusted his jacket, it was suddenly very hot in the Wintery courtyard._ Taking a breath, he pushed down the welling hopelessness and he begged. “Come on Seeker, I’d like to talk, I think I should apologise.”

She turned quite sharply to look at him, “there’s nothing to be sorry for. I thought you wanted me, I was mistaken. Nothing more to say.”

“Seeker that isn’t true.” 

“Leave it, Varric.” She’d started to walk away, so he followed her, trying to keep up. She was stubborn, but he could be just as stubborn as well. 

“Seeker! Blast it, Cassandra!”

Cassandra stopped at her name; and glanced a little to see there was a sparse crowd looking at them. “Not here.” She hissed. 

First she dragged him to her room over the foundry, but after a second it became apparent to her that it was too loud during the day. So she took him to the Herald’s Rest, but even as she pressed open the tavern door, the Iron Bill’s hand raised in greeting and she didn’t even cross the threshold. 

They eventually arrived in a small glade, halfway down the mountain that Skyhold was perched upon.

“Damn it, Cassandra, we’ve got to be two miles from Skyhold.” The trees covered a small clearing, barely twenty paces across and there’s a tree that’s been hacked up badly by a sword that’s still lodged in it. He wondered if she’d use it on him. “There are easier ways to hide the body.” He grumbled, secretly relieved they’d come to a stop.

The Seeker looked at him sharply, and he raised his hands in apology. With a glance towards the tree with the sword stuck in it, she shook her head and told him seriously. “I have hayfever.”

“I, um.” He floundered and realised that he was utterly lost for words. He didn’t know what that was supposed to mean.

She crossed her arms over her chest, she was trying to be intimidating, but she was biting her lip and her face was drawn with uncertainty. “You wanted to talk,” she reminded him, she was frustrated and looked like she was about to hit something or him. 

He realised that she was possibly just as anxious as he was. 

“And I told you there was nothing to say, you told me there was someone else.” 

“It’s just Bianca.” 

And Cassandra frowned at him, “is this some kind of joke? Your crossbow?”

“Easy Seeker, I named the crossbow after the woman. We had a thing, she got married and left me with a crossbow. We’ve both agreed that nothing can happen.” It was meant to be a quiet confession, but he was pretty sure that he was yelling it at her, the panic emboldening him to just say it all. Lay all his cards across the table. 

Cassandra was stoney silent. 

And Varric had nowhere to go but keep talking, she hadn’t punched him yet, which was a plus and a spark of hope. 

“Of course I want you.” He added before he’d thought better of it, “but when Bianca happened, well I thought that was it for me. And now, it’s like running into a brick wall.” Varric sighed, he was a damned fool, but at least he could be honest with her. “I constructed a whole narrative about it, _the doomed romance,_ it wasn’t the best idea, but breaking that, well, it changes who I am. What I think of myself.” 

“It’s not me, it’s you?” She snapped back, voice raised and arms in the air. “This isn’t exactly poetry, Varric.” 

“You were expecting a writer?” He replied miserably.

She glared at him, simmering hatred that dissolved all at once into a bark of laughter. “Andraste wept, I didn’t pin you as a hopeless romantic.” 

“Well,” he shrugged, but stood quietly optimistic. She’d nailed it in one, he was a hopeless romantic. 

She shook her head and sat down on the soft grass, patting a spot beside her. Her hands rip up little tuffes, “I can sympathise, after Anthony, I thought that was it for me too.” 

Varric felt like he’d struck gold, “Seeker,” he whistled excitedly, “you’ve been sitting on that one, just who is Anthony?” 

“He’s my brother, he died,” she said as she licked her lower lip and swallowed her breath. She looked away from him, tugging up more grass, roots and all - and throwing the clump into the tree line. She laughed bitterly, “we were going to hunt dragons together. After he died I decided to join the Seekers.”

It was like ice water down his spine, and he knew he had never been good at reassurances, “I didn’t know.” 

Cassandra looked at him then, a little reassuring smile on her face, “I didn’t tell you. But after it happened, I was sure that that was it for me too, my life was over. The Maker leads us all to strange places.” 

“Believe me, this is not where I expected to end up.” Varric agreed, sweeping a hand around the little glade. 

“I haven’t told anyone about this place, you’re lucky I like you.” Then she blinked at what she’d just said and shook her head a little. 

“You-?” _Like me?_ He didn’t say the word, didn't quite know how to feel, how to fit that information into the grand tapestry of what his life was supposed to be. 

“Well I certainly don’t hate you.” She snapped, a little roughly. With grass stains on her fingertips and a wine-stain blush across her cheeks. 

Grinning he reminded her, “don’t you? Do you interrogate all of your friends?” He felt safe, like the unstable sand beneath his feet had slipped away to solid rock.

She shook her head, sneaking a quick look at him, before she patted once at the grass next to her. “Interrogated? Please. We sat in a room and you talked circles around me for three weeks. I could have stopped it, but well, you were more eloquent back then.” 

“You wound me Seeker,” he returned, but he took her offer and sat down beside her, his legs stretched out in front of him. His right leg brushed up against her knee, but she didn’t move away. A spark of wild satisfaction burst in his chest. “The longer I kept you talking, the more time Hawke had. A bit of me thought you were enjoying yourself.” 

“That’s not _not_ true.” Cassandra flushed as she replied and dropped her face against his shoulder, to hide her expression. “I liked the way you talked.” It was cute with her cheek nuzzled against his jacket. 

Feeling content, he couldn’t help teasing her. “Are you sniffing me?”

“I am not sniffing you.” She huffed back, bolting upright, looking far guiltier than she rightly should have been if Varric’s accusation hadn’t been dead on the money.

He smiled with satisfaction, “can we, do you mind if we work back up to-“ _me fucking you?_ More words he wasn’t sure he had any right to think, let alone say. 

“And there’s no one else?”

“There is no one else, I don’t know why I said that.” He reassured her.

She smiled, a little nod. But she doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t move and her fingers have stilled, caught in tight knots in the grass. 

“There’s no not-crude way of asking this so I’m just going to go right for it.” He admitted, a hint of his earlier worry prodding him again, as though it hadn’t quite gone away, only hidden for a moment. 

She snorted with laughter, “it is not like you to be coy.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“What? Here, now?” She replied, blushing so hard, voice thick. She stared at him, looking utterly horrified, and he expected a slap for it. Cassandra even reached out her hand, frowning on her face as she gently ran her fingers over his collar bone, and told him resolutely, “there won’t be a third chance, Varric.” 

“I intend to not fuck this up.” He told her steadfast, resolute. Then to put his words into action, he reached for her waist, he pulled her across the ground to him, going in for a furious kiss against her lips. 

She kissed him back, or rather she pressed her face against his in an almost violent coming together. 

_It was a turn up for the books, well not one of his books, he’d never be caught writing such a cliche twist ending. Should he even indulge in the ending, there was Bianca to think about…_

“Stop thinking so loud.” She grumbled.

Her tongue licked against his lower lip, and her hand splayed out against the coarse hair of chest, his shirt unbuttoned before he could protest. Not that he wanted to protest, he very much didn’t. Against his mouth she made a little moan, low and high and he drank them up. 

Then pulled back, fool that he was. “Maker, I-“

“Varric,” his name was like honey on her lips, grounding all at once. 

“I keep thinking that a good writer never changes his ending, and I put a whole lot of foreshadowing into my life.” 

She huffed at him, “this is merely the second act twist.” 

“You think you can woo me with your fancy writing talk, huh Seeker?”

“Is it working?”

“Surprisingly, it is.” He grinned. And it was easier, seeing her, it made it easier to get out of his head and push all of his doubts away. Though one little fear still escaped his mouth, “I’m not renaming my crossbow after you.” 

“Know when to shut up.” She sighed, rubbing her cheek against his stubble. 

“Shit, Seeker,” he breathed, clawing at her back and finding the hardback of a padded jerkin. “What are you wearing?”

She huffed, her hot breath ghosting over his ear and making him shiver. Cassandra pulled back enough to untie the complicated knot work at her waist to undo the light armour, “I was training,” she offered by way of explanation. 

“Do the practise dummies usually hit back?” Varric asked before he could help himself. 

Cassandra had just pulled the jerkin over her head. “Not usually, but I have on occasion shattered the wooden post.” 

“Damn.” That was an image he couldn’t get out of his head. Distinctly, but distantly Varric remembered he was quite sure that other night that Cassandra was trying to kill him. His mouth was dry, so it was probably poison. 

“Would you stop swearing?” She glared at him, folded the thick leather piece in hand and lay it on the ground, as though waiting for him to tease her. But she failed to account for the fact that she was left just in a tunic and underneath her shirt, her nipples had stiffened noticeably. 

“No,” he returned, almost breathlessly, delirious in her presence. Barely cutting off the next curse before he voiced it. He moved his hand forward carefully, first to touch the firm slant of her waist and slide up to cup her breast, which fits well in his hand and leaves his thumb free to trail runemarks over her flesh. 

She leant into his touch, he felt her breath catch under her ribcage and can feel the faint trembling hammering of her heart. “Varric,” the sumptuous sound that dropped from her lips wasn’t a war cry, but it wasn’t an intention of passivity either. 

With Cassandra so close he could feel her hips move, just shift into a better position. But it sent a shock right down to his groin. He remembered that wriggle, and hadn’t stopped thinking about it. Truthfully he hadn’t stopped wanking about it either. 

Cassandra pulled him by the collar back to kiss her. Her hands ran above his shoulders and pulled his hair out from the tie, knotting her fingers into the pulled loose strands. Then she kissed his cheek again, licked the lobe of his ear and pulled his golden earring into her mouth for a moment, swirling the cold metal with her tongue. 

“Shit,” he swallowed hard, pulling her back to kiss. As he stroked his tongue across her lower lip, she tasted metallic and he could feel the roughness where she’s been nervously biting all morning. He sucked lightly on her lip and swallowed the sweet, desperate mewling sounds she was making. 

“You should take something off.” Her blush was still dark against her skin, but there wasn’t a hint of shyness in her expression. Her eyes cut across him, sharp as her steel sword, as though challenging him to reject it. 

Varric agreed, but he couldn’t quite move. She was salvation come to his shipwrecked shores.

But when he didn’t reply, she pushed away and stood suddenly. Standing Cassandra wriggled out of her trousers. She folded her clothes neatly, because of course she did. Then she sat back back down on the grass, her long legs laid out in front of her and crossed at the hip. 

He thought she was the most delicious thing that he’s ever seen, her calves are well defined, her thighs shapely, even her knees were cute. 

Then she unhooked her ankle, fuck the woman was not shy, bent her knee in the air and placed her foot back down on the grass. To give him a proper look. _And Maker_ , does he look. He moved forward a little and her bare foot caught him in the chest. Breathing hard he looked up at her face. 

Her lips were parted, her breath was coming thick and fast, “it would have been presumptuous of me to have brought a blanket.” 

“Only a little, not complaining. You’re so cute.” He caught her ankle in his palm, kissed her ankle and then grazed his teeth across the tight curves of her calf. 

Cassandra pulled her leg back, and made a dismissive voice as though she didn’t believe his flattery, but moved her fingers over where his lips had just been. She tried for a haughty look, but it was broken the moment her eyes met his, and she smiled, it lit up her face within something very akin to lust. She pressed onto her cute knees. “Off,” she insisted, pressing her body close to his and helping him with the laces of his trousers. 

“Seek...Cassandra.” He hissed as her pinky finger ghosted across his stiff cock. His hand fisted into her shirt at her shoulder, in anticipation. He entrusted himself to her hands, just as he wished to give the rest of himself readily to her.

She gave a little appreciative hum to his reaction, and untucked him from his clothes. 

It shouldn’t have come as such a shock to him, but Varric had been ignoring his own arousal in favour of drinking her in. And he realised, quite jarringly, that he was achingly hard. 

He didn’t have a moment to consider it, as Cassandra rolled forward on her hips to effectively straddle him. She was wet, he could feel as much with the already leaking tip of his cock. “I won’t last long,” he warned with a breath as he wrapped an arm around her waist.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” she breathed in return, reaching between their bodies to position him against her and slip down until their hips met. She stilled and pressed her hand back against the crown of her head, “back here. Do you want to keep going or pick this up again next week?”

Varric barked a laugh, and nuzzled against her neck, “want to keep going?”

“Desperately,” she moaned in a low voice. And she rather seemed to mean it too as she wriggled her hips, throwing her arm over his shoulder to give her purchase and shuddering into a slow rhythm. 

Varric curved his hands under her arse, to urge her careful ministrations faster. Her name upon his lips, he bucked into the wet heat of her cunt, clinging onto every scrap of self-control he could muster. He could feel her slick coating the apex of his thighs, and he couldn’t believe he had ever envisioned a life not knowing how she felt. 

Cassandra’s powerful thighs lifted her up, before sinking back, the drag of her flesh creating delicious friction as she moved. Her abdomen tight and the hand that had been in her hair, snaked down to grab her own breast. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and she sunk a little, pressing her lips against his temple, murmuring nonsense against his forehead. 

Varric’s own breath was ragged against his lungs, fraught and violent gasps intermingled with a wide selection of his favourite curses. His hand fisted into the loose shirt she was so some blasted reason still wearing, and with barely a warning exactly a strangled cry at the crook of her neck, he spilled his seed. 

Cassandra had slowed, but hadn’t stopped, until he’d withdrawn from inside her.

“You’re… you were,” he gasped rolling through his extensive vocabulary to find anything good enough to compare her to. “Perfect. You were… You didn’t cum?”

She gave him a small roll of her shoulder as though it was no matter. “I don’t expect-“ but the thought wasn’t fully articulated before his fingers found the swollen place where he had just spent. 

“Expect me to,” he insisted, pushing past the sleepy fog in his brain to find the honest truth. “I want to.” 

“Oh.” 

“I want to see you unravel, Seeker.” He offered, in a husky voice against her neck, as he worked his stubby finger inside her still tight cunt, feeling the tight pulsing of her walls against his fingertip. 

Cassandra shuddered, and ground herself into his hand. Until she stilled, her mouth open in a silent cry, before her head fell against his neck, she held her breath, shivering lay still until it was over. Her eyes were closed, her lashes splayed prettily across her cheeks. Blindly she found his mouth to kiss him. 

Her feverish kiss turned to a gasp, when he withdrew his hand from her. “Well.” 

“Varric.” She returned, half opening her eyes to glare half-hearted at him. A lazy, well-fucked smile across her lips. 

“Cassandra,” Varric breathed, lying back into the wild grasses, “you’re filthy,” he pulled his arm around her as she curled into him. “I wouldn’t have bet on you being filthy.” 

Cassandra shook her head and huffed out a breath of amusement. “Why?Are you going to tell anyone about this?” She asked, her teeth biting into the flesh of her kiss-swollen lower lip. 

“Won’t breathe a word, Seeker.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. 

“I only meant, well, will tell me first. You know the Inquisitor will have questions.” Her gaze flicked up to his, as she lifted her head slightly from his shoulder. 

He laughed, “yer, the noisy so-and-so will. I’ll tell you first.” He promised. 

“In detail,” she prompted, a wicked grin on her face. 

“Ohh, have you forgotten already?” He teased. 

“I am curious,” she said, pressing two fingers under his jaw to press a kiss against his lips, before continuing, “you spent three days telling me about Hawke’s love-making that you surely can’t have witnessed… can you?… no… don’t tell me, I don’t want to know that. But tell me how you would recount these events.”

“Probably make myself less nervous, more suave.” 

“Don’t ruin it.” Cassandra warned in a tone that betrayed that she was only mostly joking. 

“Wait,” Varric grinned at her, just knowing he was about to get a smack, “you call it ‘love-making?’” 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> She 100% smacked him, you know, fondly.


End file.
